Books in 2015 and 2016

I was searching for something in my phone the other day when I came across this old note, buried and long forgotten. My memory is fuzzy but I think I got my Kindle in 2015, opening me up to the world of ebooks. It also made reading in English while in Korea easier. Here are the some of the books I read in 2015 and 2016, posting now for posterity’s sake.

2015 (July to November)

• The Martian – Andy Weir
• Longbourn – Jo Baker
• Into the Wilderness series (6 books) – Sara Donati
• Steve Jobs – Walter Isaacson
• Why Not Me – Mindy Kaling

2016

• The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared – Jonas Jonasson
• The Good Gut – Justin and Erica Sonnenburg
• All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr
• The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up – Marie Kondo
• Ready Player One – Ernest Cline
• For the Win – Cory Doctorow
• Armada – Ernest Cline
• Where’d You Go, Bernadette -Maria Semple
• This One is Mine – Marie Semple
• Eligible – Curtis Sittenfield
• The Japanese Lover – Isabelle Allende
• Spark Joy – Marie Kondo
• Lab girl – Hope Jahren
• The Cuckoos Calling (audio) – J.K. Rowling
• The Perks of Being a Wallflower (audio) – Stephen Chbosky
• The Road to Little Dribbling – Bill Bryson
• The Summer Before the War – Helen Simonson
• Scrappy Little Nothing – Anna Kendrik
• Shoe Dog – Phil Knight
• Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – J.K. Rowling

Started:

• Snow Crash – Neal Stephenson
• Hamilton – Ron Chernov

The Martian is probably the only book from these lists which I could passably recall the plot now. I also remember enjoying Longbourn, a reimagining of Pride and Prejudice, but from the perspective of the servants. Ready Player One inspired a short period of reading sci-fi. Which remind, I want to give Snow Crash another try.

This little memo reminds me of the importance of keeping records, even of the little things. For example it’s interesting to see how I read more celebrity memoirs in these years, whereas I am not at all interested in them now. I wouldn’t have remembered that now without this list.

It’s also fun how these lists are a micro record of my life, but also a reflection of the larger world at that point in history. Remember when Marie Kondo and the question “Does this spark joy?” was all the rage? I guess that was around 2015 and 2016, judging from my reading. And Hamilton the musical debuted in 2015, inspiring me to pick up (but not get very far with) the biography.

Year in Books:

2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, 2023